I

In a collection of documents published in 1919 as Irish Labour and its international relations, Labour claimed that:

Since its establishment in 1889 as a biennial or triennial conference of socialist parties, to debate the major issues of the day, Labour had ignored the Second International, but much was to change between 1917 and 1920. The war and socialist efforts to end it, the Bolshevik revolution, and expectations of a big swing to the left after the war, made the increasingly strong Irish Labour movement ever more determined to pursue its internationalism. Internationalism was also an attractive diversion; a straightforward way of waving the red flag without having to confront Unionists, Home Rulers, or republicans at home. The tendency was reinforced by the revival of the Socialist Party of Ireland (S.P.I.) in January 1917. The S.P.I. had been identified with James Connolly between 1910 and 1912, and arguably the revived party was intended to associate Labour leaders with their ‘national martyr’. In practice a party within a party, it included many of Labour’s most powerful figures and was not going to embark on any domestic campaigns that might embarrass Labour or the trade unions. Instead, mindful of Connolly’s connections with the Second International and the American left, and of how Connolly’s Irish Socialist Republican Party had secured recognition as a distinctly Irish delegation at the 1900 congress of the International, the S.P.I. saw its special role as the affirmation of Ireland’s national rights through internationalism.Footnote ¹¹

By 1916 the Second International had shrivelled to the International Socialist Bureau as affiliates and disparate initiatives to reconvene the International took conflicting positions on the war. The S.P.I. was ‘uncompromising in its absolute opposition’ to the war, while the Labour Party moved gradually to an anti-war stance and a ‘position which, on the whole, is that of the Independents in Germany, the late Minoritaires in France, the B.S.P. [British Socialist Party], I.L.P. [Independent Labour Party], and S.L.P. [Socialist Labour Party] in Great Britain, and the official Socialist Party in Italy and the United States’.Footnote ¹² But before 1920, Irish Labour was willing to work with all tendencies. Its core principles boiled down to support for the revival of an International and for the two Russian revolutions, and insistence that the International not be confined to belligerent countries and that the Irish be admitted as a separate national section. After the first Russian revolution in March 1917, the Labour Party welcomed the Petrograd Soviet’s call for an international socialist conference and established a formal link with the International Socialist Bureau. William O’Brien, the leading official in the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, attended the conference at Leeds in June 1917 convened by the British United Socialist Council to salute the Russian revolution. At the annual Irish Trade Union Congress (I.T.U.C.) in August, it was agreed ‘to establish the Irish Labour Party as a distinct unit in the International Labour movement’. In January 1918, a joint Labour Party–S.P.I. delegation met Maxim Litvinoff, Soviet Russia’s plenipotentiary in London, and officials of the International Socialist Bureau attending the British Labour Party’s conference at Nottingham. Another mission was sent to England in April to lobby against conscription. The annual I.T.U.C. in August established ‘an Irish Section of the International’, comprising three members of the Labour Party and two of the S.P.I.Footnote ¹³

In the wake of the annual congress, the national executive met on 9 September and decided to contest the next general election. At this point it was felt that Germany had lost the war, but would fight on for another year. Labour expected a wartime election, in which, because conscription was still on the statute book, all of the non-Unionist parties would be standing on an abstentionist platform. Four reasons were given.

The expectation of a socialist bearing on the peace settlement was realised to a degree: specifically in that government delegations to the Paris peace talks included labour sections, and the Treaty of Versailles provided for the establishment of the International Labour Organization, and more vaguely in the impact of socialist demands for a peace based on democracy and self-determination.

But the crumbling position of the Central Powers in October meant that by the end of the month it was plain that the war would be over within weeks. Labour became more anxious to establish an international presence and more nervous about contesting a peacetime election in which there would be no consensus on abstentionism. At the special congress on 1–2 November at which Labour famously decided not to contest the forthcoming election, all of the speakers opposing withdrawal made the point that without M.P.s, Labour’s voice in a revived International would be diminished. Some argued that this would weaken Ireland’s case for self-determination, and there was clearly a feeling that Labour could make a unique contribution to the national cause through the International. Tom Johnson, who led the case for withdrawal, conceded: ‘The position of labour at the International was undoubtedly a very serious one. Undoubtedly it almost overbalanced all the other questions and all the other arguments against taking part in the elections’.Footnote ¹⁵ A lengthy statement on foreign policy was adopted, urging the International Socialist Bureau to ‘call the International together without further delay’.Footnote ¹⁶

Once the armistice was signed on 11 November, Johnson was despatched to London to press the case with Camille Huysmans, secretary of the International Socialist Bureau. The conference would eventually take place in Berne, Switzerland, in February 1919. Huysmans told Johnson to ‘prepare our case and send our delegation to the Congress’.Footnote ¹⁷ On 23 December 1918, the S.P.I.’s executive nominated O’Brien and O’Shannon to a ‘Hands off Russia’ conference in London on 18 January, and J. J. Hughes as its delegate to Berne.Footnote ¹⁸ On 28 December the Labour Party executive appointed Thomas MacPartlin, O’Brien, O’Shannon, and Johnson to Berne. The last three were also given credentials as S.P.I. comrades.Footnote ¹⁹

II

Who first thought of the Democratic Programme? In November 1917, with due fanfare in St Mary’s Hall, Belfast and repeated emphasis on ‘democratic’, Joe Devlin, M.P. for Belfast West and the Irish Parliamentary Party’s labour spokesman, had proposed a ‘Democratic Forward Movement’ to improve the industrial and social conditions of workers, and outlined what the Irish News called ‘a practical programme of reform’; an initiative which was welcomed in the new Labour paper, Irish Opinion: A Weekly Journal of Industrial and Political Democracy.Footnote ²⁰ Meeting in March 1918, Dublin trades council welcomed ‘the proposed establishment of a people’s Peace, based on the right of all nations to self-determination’ and called for a special Labour congress ‘to adopt a democratic programme for proposed embodiment in the future constitution for the government of the Irish people, and to make arrangements for the election of representatives of labour to before-mentioned Irish assembly. International representatives of Labour to be invited to attendance at said Congress’.Footnote ²¹

According to O’Shannon, the 1919 document originated in a request to O’Brien from Ó Ceallaigh.Footnote ²² That the support of free nations for Irish freedom would prove a trump card in the struggle had become ‘an article of faith’ in Sinn Féin.Footnote ²³ Dáil Éireann intended to put its case to the Paris peace talks, and picked Ó Ceallaigh to do it. For the Republic to feature a social manifesto in its founding documents would have been in keeping with the temper of the times, the conventional wisdom being that the International would influence the talks. Nor was it surprising that Sinn Féin didn’t draft its own statement. Since the industrial unrest of 1911, advanced nationalists had acquired a respect for a Labour movement that seemed determined to guard its patch jealously. If Sinn Féin wanted Labour’s help at Berne, it was not going to patronise it, the more so as Sinn Féin and Labour leaders were in regular contact. Conversely, the Labour Party’s attitude to the Republic was one of passive and conditional support. The Labour leaders made no effort to milk the occasion by projecting their draft of the Programme as an official Labour document, and it was not referred to in the minutes of the I.T.U.C. national executive. If the Labour Party had asked for the Democratic Programme, it would have been its only demand of Sinn Féin other than insisting the Republic did not restrain industrial conflict.

On the other hand, it is possible that the S.P.I. was a prompt. A joint meeting of the Sinn Féin executive and Sinn Féin T.D.s at 10 a.m. on New Year’s Day 1919 agreed to call a secret assembly of ‘the Republican representatives’ on 7 January, at which they would be asked to consider the relations between Sinn Féin and Dáil Éireann, a declaration of independence, and a message to the free nations of the world. The absence of any reference to the Democratic Programme at this point suggests that Sinn Féin had not thought of it. An entry in O’Brien’s diary for the same day reads: ‘JJH and self saw RM re ISC’. ‘JJH’ must be Hughes, and ‘ISC’ is likely to be ‘International Socialist Conference’, though in European socialist circles the abbreviation referred to the International Socialist Commission, the permanent committee established by the Zimmerwald Conference of anti-war socialist parties in 1915, and which eventually dissolved into the Communist International in March 1919. Farrell believed ‘RM’ to be Richard Mulcahy, T.D., who eventually proposed the formal adoption of the Democratic Programme in Dáil Éireann.Footnote ²⁴ Ó Cathasaigh reckons it was probably Ronald J. P. Mortished, an S.P.I. comrade and a linguist, who would later work with the International Labour Organization in Geneva.Footnote ²⁵ But if O’Brien had not met Mulcahy on 1 January, he met P. J. Little and Rory O’Connor on 3 January, the same day as an S.P.I. plenary session on Berne. On 11 and 14 January, Michael Collins, Harry Boland, Michael Staines, Gavin Duffy, O’Connor, and Little, met O’Brien, Johnson, Hughes, O’Shannon, and Thomas Farren ‘re ISC and DE [Dáil Éireann]’. Also on 14 January, Sinn Féin T.D.s discussed the documents to be put before the first Dáil.Footnote ²⁶ Included in a press release was the first public reference to what became the Democratic Programme:

A further meeting of Labour and Sinn Féin leaders – including J. J. Walsh, Mulcahy, Collins, Duffy, and Little – took place on 18 January.Footnote ²⁸

III

There are two versions of the drafting of the Programme. Speaking in Seanad Éireann in November 1943, Mulcahy criticised the government’s record on welfare and education, and quoted from the Democratic Programme. Responding as Minister for Finance, Ó Ceallaigh said:

According to a more elaborate passage in Ó Ceallaigh’s memoirs, Sinn Féin had charged Boland with the job of drafting the Programme, Boland being regarded as a socialist sympathiser. Boland arrived at the Dáil arrangements committee on the night of 20 January with no more than ‘rough notes’ received from O’Brien and Johnson. Ó Ceallaigh, as chairman, read the notes to the meeting. Some points encountered fierce opposition, and nothing was agreed except that Ó Ceallaigh produce something acceptable.Footnote ³⁰

Ó Ceallaigh’s Seanad statement was challenged by O’Shannon in articles in the Irish Times printed shortly after the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first Dáil. O’Shannon insisted that the Democratic Programme was drafted by Johnson, with inputs from himself and O’Brien. Crucially, he was able to produce Johnson’s draft, ‘laboriously thought out and worked in … patiently revised and amended’.Footnote ³¹ That attention to detail was characteristic of Johnson, and O’Shannon’s account is the more widely believed.

Ó Ceallaigh’s recollections are further undermined by P. S. O’Hegarty and Dr James Ryan. O’Hegarty claimed that Collins had summoned a meeting of Irish Republican Brotherhood (I.R.B.) members on the morning of 20 January to vet the declarations to go before the Dáil. Collins read the papers evenly, expressing no opinions on the content. Only the Democratic Programme provoked a debate, the majority deciding that ‘all internal and arguable questions like this should be left over until the English had actually been got out’. Certainly, that was O’Hegarty’s attitude, and the future Free State civil servant recalled how the ‘doctrinaire jargon’ of the ‘doctrinaire English Radical’ had ‘made his gorge rise’. Oddly, he didn’t know at the time that Johnson was the author. Collins promised to have the offending document ‘suppressed’, but ‘next morning, the others refused to go on’ without it and the proposed Programme was passed to Ó Ceallaigh who, according to O’Shannon, had insisted on its retention.Footnote ³² Ryan stayed in Ó Ceallaigh’s house on the night of 20 January, and remembered Ó Ceallaigh and his wife ‘re-phrasing’ a draft by Johnson.Footnote ³³

While O’Hegarty and Ó Ceallaigh conflict on timing and on the basis of the final version, they are agreed that it was done by the latter under instructions to tone it down. It is obvious too that Sinn Féin was not worried about Labour objections to amendments. Ó Ceallaigh remembered going home in the small hours of 21 January, finding a quiet spot in a house crowded with T.D.s, composing an acceptable edition with his wife until after 4 a.m., and then taking it to the office for typing by 10 a.m.Footnote ³⁴

IV

O’Shannon wrote: ‘of the 133 lines [in Johnson’s draft] 66 were deleted … of the 91 lines in the official record 36 were not in the Johnson draft’.Footnote ³⁵ The difference between the texts was not as stark as this suggests. Some of the revisions were purely textual to eliminate wordiness, repetition, or detail deemed inordinate in a constitutional document. Others were more substantial. Comparing the texts (see Appendix), it can be seen that Ó Ceallaigh largely followed Johnson’s plan and the I.R.B.’s instruction to tone down the rhetoric (as O’Hegarty recalled), or ‘put it in a more historic or more presentable way’ (as Ryan described it).Footnote ³⁶ He was, of course, working against the clock in distracting circumstances which did not encourage originality.

How significant were the changes? O’Shannon, an Easter Week veteran, had suggested the inclusion of the quotation from Pearse in paragraph one.Footnote ³⁷ The key change in the final draft here was that Pearse’s statement that ‘no private right in property is good as against the public right of the nation’ was replaced with the phrase ‘all right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare’. The tone is softer but the meaning is not essentially different. Arguably Johnson’s second paragraph is a restatement of his first. Ó Ceallaigh’s version is quite different and bland. In his third paragraph, Johnson’s wording hints at a right to work and a minimum wage. Ó Ceallaigh’s formulation is a little more diffident, but amounts to the same thing. Johnson edged closer to a real, enforceable commitment in his fourth paragraph, without quite sealing it. Ó Ceallaigh retained the most important passage (‘the first duty of the Government of the Republic to make provision for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the children, to secure that no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing, or shelter’), and deleted the aim of encouraging the ‘most capable and sympathetic’ to enter teacher training. Paragraph 5 of Ó Ceallaigh’s draft, on ‘the necessity of abolishing … the Poor Law System’, is entirely his own. It reflected long-standing nationalist rhetoric, and, significantly, it includes the one positive promise in either draft.Footnote ³⁸ Paragraph 5 of Johnson’s draft and paragraph 6 of Ó Ceallaigh’s draft both retained the aspiration to develop natural resources, but the latter deleted the reference to the possibility of state requisition without compensation. Johnson’s paragraph 6 and Ó Ceallaigh’s paragraph 7 were influenced by the food supply crisis of late 1916, when a special I.T.U.C. conference called for price control and a ban on selected exports. Johnson’s version came close to demanding state ‘organisation’ of external trade, but arguably only in times of a food shortage. Ó Ceallaigh took the latter interpretation and restricted the proposal to food and necessities in times of scarcity. In respect of paragraphs 7 of Johnson’s draft and 8 of Ó Ceallaigh’s draft, Ó Ceallaigh deleted the requirement to ‘encourage’ trade unionism and co-operatives and workers’ control of industry, though this was the section in which Labour would have had the strongest vested interest. Coogan attributes the excision to Collins.Footnote ³⁹ Greaves argued that Johnson’s final paragraph, including ‘the elimination of that class in society which lives upon the wealth produced by the workers’ paraphrased Friedrich Engels’s introduction to the 1883 German edition of The Communist Manifesto. A critical difference is that Engels made it clear that the bourgeoisie was the class to be eliminated, whereas Johnson’s formula was pointless. O’Shannon claimed the I.R.B. took particular exception to it, and it was the only paragraph to be removed completely.Footnote ⁴⁰ Ultimately, the changes were of little significance.

V

At 3.30 p.m. on 21 January, Dáil Éireann assembled in a chilly Mansion House. The Democratic Programme was the last of the four constitutional documents to be adopted. Ironically, two future Cumann na nGaedheal stalwarts introduced it. As the Programme was the only one of the four documents which had not been translated into Irish, Piaras Béaslaí was given the job of making an ‘impromtu translation’ while pretending to read it in Irish. ‘Nobody seems to have noticed anything unusual’, he recalled. ‘The version which appeared in the official report was written by me some days later.’Footnote ⁴¹ After the English version was read by Tom Kelly, who had a pro-labour record on Dublin Corporation, the Ceann Comhairle invited Mulcahy to propose its adoption. Speaking entirely in Irish, Mulcahy commended the Dáil to give effect to the Programme in terms that Connolly would have approved of:

The seconder was Con Collins, T.D. for West Limerick. He spoke briefly, pointing out that the text had been read in two languages ‘agus dá bhrigh sin is beag duine annso ná tuigeann an scéal’ [and for that reason few people here will not understand it]; an interesting comment in the light of subsequent controversy about whether the T.D.s really understood what they were doing in endorsing the Programme.

Sitting between his wife, Marie, and O’Shannon in the public gallery, Johnson was moved to tears. Unconcerned at the changes and omissions, O’Shannon had to restrain him from applauding. To his dying day, Johnson ‘enjoyed reminiscing’ about the occasion.Footnote ⁴³ O’Brien and Hughes attended the reception afterwards, and assured Cathal Brugha, who had presided over the proceedings, of their support for the Republic.Footnote ⁴⁴

VI

The Democratic Programme did its job at Berne. In the event, only Johnson and O’Shannon travelled to Switzerland, accredited by the Labour Party and S.P.I. respectively.Footnote ⁴⁵ Received as a national delegation, they carried with them lengthy memoranda on Ireland’s case for self-determination. The conference passed two resolutions on Ireland, endorsing its right to self-determination and calling for peace talks. Prior to the votes, the Irish persuaded the British Labour Party delegation, led by Ramsay MacDonald, to replace home rule within the empire with self-determination as its policy on Ireland. In return, the Irish agreed not to push for recognition of the Republic. Johnson and O’Shannon were elected to the Permanent Commission of the Berne congress, and drafted a memorandum on Ireland for the congress’s delegation to the Paris peace conference. On returning via Paris, they also briefed the Dáil mission to the conference and gave lengthy interviews to the socialist dailies Le Populaire and L’Humanité.Footnote ⁴⁶ The failure to persuade MacDonald to endorse the Republic did not take from Johnson and O’Shannon’s achievement. Changing British Labour policy on Ireland was a slow business, as the party straddled the line between patriotism and socialist internationalism. It was 1920 before British Labour resolved formally in favour of self-determination for Ireland, and party leaders continued to deny that self-determination would lead to separation from Britain.Footnote ⁴⁷ ‘Thomas Johnson and Cathal O’Shannon have done a good day’s work in a very short space of time’, commended the republican weekly New Ireland, which published a variety of features on Russia, Bolshevism, and soviets in March and April.Footnote ⁴⁸ In accordance with a recommendation at Berne, Labour called a general strike on May Day for ‘international proletarian solidarity and self-determination of all peoples’. Following a meeting with Johnson and O’Brien, de Valera urged the Sinn Féin Árd Fheis in April to back the strike, emphasising the help received from Labour at Berne.Footnote ⁴⁹

But was it a Programme? Johnson’s draft included no firm demands, and it is likely that this was deliberate. The idea that Labour wanted action, and pushed the first Dáil as far as it would go, is completely at variance with Labour policy at the time. Is it accurate even to say it was of Labour provenance? There was an ambiguity about the role of Johnson and O’Brien in their dealings with Sinn Féin, highlighted by Luke J. Duffy at the 1924 Congress:

Johnson regarded his part in producing the Democratic Programme as a personal service to the Republic rather than action on behalf of Labour. Throughout the independence struggle, Labour avoided a bargaining relationship with Sinn Féin and did not formally recognise Dáil Éireann until after the vote on the Anglo–Irish Treaty. Politically, Labour had resolved, in withdrawing from the 1918 election, that it was not its business to lead on the national question. Substantially, the party was really the trade unions, who did not wish to jeopardise their relations with British state agencies. They continued to deal with the British Ministry of Labour and its arbitration services and trade boards, and to operate social insurance sections under the National Insurance Act (1911), which remained a big incentive to recruitment and through which they had considerable funds held in Britain. While Labour continued to assist the Republic in various ways – most notably through strike action and canvassing British Labour – it never tried to tie these efforts to a quid pro quo. It did not try to exploit its leverage on Berne to present Sinn Féin with a side-bar of more immediate demands. It did not object to modifications of Johnson’s draft. It put no pressure on Dáil Éireann to give effect to the Programme. And it had no wish to repeat the Berne initiative. When Frank P. Walsh of the American Friends of Irish Freedom and champion of radical causes urged that a similar embassy be despatched to the American Federation of Labor, Sinn Féin leaders were enthusiastic, but Johnson agreed with de Valera that the idea was impractical.Footnote ⁵¹ Neither did Labour try to encourage the Republic’s pursuit of recognition from Soviet Russia in 1920–1.Footnote ⁵²

Some urgency crept into Labour’s style in 1921 as the post-war boom yielded to an economic slump. At Easter, the I.T.U.C. issued a manifesto The country in danger! appealing for action on unemployment, and quoting from paragraph 1 of the Democratic Programme. Tellingly, it described the content of the Programme as ‘principles’, and while it said that the time had come to give them ‘practical effect’, it did not say what could be effected. Instead, it listed a series of more concrete measures designed to create employment.Footnote ⁵³ Again, the rhetoric was not followed up with action or hard bargaining, and Labour tamely stood aside from the elections to the second Dáil in May.

Arguably, Sinn Féin took the Programme more seriously than Labour, initially at least. The I.R.B. would hardly have opposed it had it been mere fluff. Ó Ceallaigh inserted the nearest thing to a commitment in either text in his paragraph deploring the Poor Law. Moving its adoption, both Mulcahy and Con Collins had urged it be taken seriously in the business of the Dáil. Béaslaí reckoned the British had banned publication of the Programme for fear of the working class support it would draw to Sinn Féin.Footnote ⁵⁴ But if there were concerns about Labour requesting the application of the Programme, they were scotched by the new president of Dáil Éireann, who was sprung from Lincoln gaol on 3 February. When on 11 April Tom Kelly asked about the implementation of the Programme, de Valera replied that it ‘contemplated a situation somewhat different from that in which they actually found themselves’ and while the foreigner occupied the country ‘they could not put fully into force their desires and their wishes as far as their social programme was concerned’.Footnote ⁵⁵ As de Valera was as anxious as anyone else in Sinn Féin to retain Labour’s goodwill and was in regular contact with Johnson, he spoke with authority.

De Valera’s opinion did not have to be the final word on the matter. The ideological coalition that was the Sinn Féin leadership ranged from those like O’Hegarty, who found the Democratic Programme obnoxious, to those like de Valera, who was sympathetic but wanted social questions to await independence, to people like Ó Ceallaigh who favoured active engagement with Labour, to social republicans like Liam Mellows. The variety of values would persist, but, on balance, the mindset of Sinn Féin leaders was radical in the immediate wake of the World War, when, for example, future conservatives like the Dáil Director of Trade and Commerce, Ernest Blythe, endorsed the re-structuring of the economy in co-operatives and stressed the need for the retention of Labour support.Footnote ⁵⁶ Aside from the Democratic Programme and the contacts with Soviet Russia, Dáil Éireann created a Department of Labour which was nigh on a Department of the Labour Party, and headed by a cabinet minister, whereas agriculture, for example, was headed by a Director, outside the cabinet. The first minister of Labour was ex-Citizen Army officer Constance Markievicz. When Markievicz was on the run or detained, her place was taken by Tom Kelly, and later by Joseph McGrath, who also managed the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union insurance section. Of course all heads and officials of the Department were members of Sinn Fèin rather than the Labour Party. Through its industrial relations conciliation boards, which were established after consultation with O’Brien and Johnson and depended on trade union co-operation, the Department was one of the Dáil administration’s most successful ventures in domestic policy. The boards offered a neat mutual accommodation, realising a long-standing trade union objective and getting the authority of the Republic more widely accepted. After the ratification of the Treaty, the Provisional Government invited Johnson to nominate the minister of Labour. When Johnson declined, McGrath accepted the post. The Department was absorbed into the Department of Industry and Commerce in September 1922, and did not re-appear until 1966.Footnote ⁵⁷ Dáil Éireann also supported Seán Etchingham, director of Fisheries and a former union leader in Wexford, in trying to re-organise the fishing industry along co-operative lines. It was puzzling to some Sinn Féiners that more of Dáil Éireann’s ‘constructive work’ was not implemented. Republican leaders pleaded that there were other priorities, distractions, administrative difficulties, arrests, and repressions.Footnote ⁵⁸ There was, too, sporadic opposition to the application of radicalism, but only after the reactionary summer of 1920 did the ideological climate shift to the right, as it did throughout Europe.

Contrary to popular opinion, some provisions of the Democratic Programme were given effect, although there is no evidence that this was other than coincidental. In the spirit of paragraph 6 of the final draft, Dáil Éireann appointed a commission of enquiry into the development of industrial resources in September 1919. Labour was offered a seat, and appointed Johnson, who also chaired a sub-committee of the commission on food resources. The commission functioned until the formation of the Provisional Government in 1922.Footnote ⁵⁹ Ó Ceallaigh’s paragraph 8 was fulfilled in 1923 when the Free State joined the International Labour Organization and ratified its conventions.Footnote ⁶⁰ And in 1925 his paragraph 5 was realised in part by the abolition of the workhouses and the replacement of the Boards of Guardians by boards of health and public assistance. What would Labour have got had it asked the first Dáil to implement the Democratic Programme?